Occasionally I am contacted by another recruiter or human resource professional regarding my interest in a new position that they are hiring for. Quite often, their method of contact is only via email, with no follow up phone call. This method of recruitment is not very effective for several reasons.

1. Times have changed

When you are hiring for a position, typically, you want to hire the best candidate in the least amount of time. This means that your recruitment process must be effective and contain a sense of urgency.

In today’s world, many people will go days or even weeks without checking their email. Instead of email, people now have other forms of contact that they are using such as phone conversation, texting, tweeting, and chatting on social media sites.

If you want to quickly know if someone is interested in the opportunity you are recruiting for, you must find a speedy way to reach out to them. Email is not the answer.

Rather than only sending an email and waiting for a reply, you should attempt all forms of communication you have on a candidate. A phone call is the best way, because what could be better than actually speaking with the candidate? If you are unsuccessful with a phone call, begin to tackle all other forms of contact you have.

2. Spam folder

With the new restrictions and rules that can be set up in email accounts, quite often recruitment emails will go directly into someone’s spam folder.

How many times have you checked your spam folder, only to quickly glance through the long list of junk emails and select “Delete All” in order to get on with your life? I do this all of the time and it would be quite easy to overlook an email from a recruiter in my spam folder. I am sure many people have deleted these emails without even realizing that it was about a legitimate job opportunity.

3. Lacks personalization

As recruiters and human resource professionals, we work diligently to perfect our initial emails to potential candidates. After all, the email is a sales pitch and we want to make it as attractive as possible, enticing the candidate to reply back or call.

It is difficult to personalize an email to a potential candidate, when you are attempting to email a large number of people. Quite often, in order to save time and reach out to many people, we will craft a generalized email to send at once to a group of potential candidates. These emails lack personalization. Each person we email has a different situation or different background and these mass emails will completely gloss over this fact.

There is nothing wrong with sending mass emails. In fact, I encourage that you do send these out in order to try every method possible to spread the word about the opportunity. However, I also recommend that you follow up these mass emails with a phone call, which can be more personalized. This in turn is more appealing and effective to potential candidates.

What are the different recruitment methods you use in order to attract candidates? Please share your tips and experiences in the comments below.